Monday, 9 October 2017

Alive '07 - 10 Years On

I know I bang on a bit about how old some parts of my collection are, waxing nostalgic about getting my lil mitts on anything electronic via limewire in the early 00's. But today's something I've been planning for a while: with all those anecdotes I don't have a solid date for when they first entered my library, there's been at least 3 PC rebuilds since then so "File Created:" is no good, but today's tale is a little different because I know exactly when I got it. November 2007.

It's hard to believe it's been a whole decade since Alive 2007 entered my life. Young Foxbat was a 13 year old high-school student who'd recently gotten together with his first proper girlfriend and was deep into rekindling his love for electronic music. And what a year I picked for it, 2007 was (and remains) and absolute scorcher for all things electric, and it should come as no surprise that Alive 2007 is one of the keystones of it. It's an absolute tour de force of the Punk's discography up until that point, using material from all their albums and a few extras. As seen here with the use of Busta Rhymes' Touch It, mashing it with Oh Yeah From Homework, then transitioning that into Technologic proper, garnished with oddly enough a small part of Voyager from Discovery. Typed out like that it sounds like a bit of a mess, but if for whatever reason you've never heard it before, trust me that it is nothing short of fantastic.

It's not ever a one off though, as immediately it's followed up with Television Rules The Nation with a touch of Around The World (and as the title says, Crecendolls later). One thing I've seen about Alive 2007 but never really understood is the people who say they didn't like Human After All until this album. I'll admit I'm a little biased as I was in the throes of an electro overload at the time but nothing much about the HAA songs is really changed on these early tracks so I never could understand it. That's not to say that these live versions aren't bloody fantastic regardless though. This is one of the tunes I use to test out new soundsystems, when the full grit of Television Rules The Nation comes in at 1:00 is pretty special.

Safe to say my little mind was pretty happy with the events up to this point, but the Punk weren't even close to started yet. This one marks the first appearance of some original accompaniment, the backbone of the entire song doesn't appear elsewhere on their discography (and came to be dubbed Aura Rock by the community IIRC), you can find a million and one re-creations and edits to remove the crowd sound on the 'net but I don't think it needs it personally. The album was up there to begin with, but this was setting it well on it's way to becoming a 10/10, I try not to swear too much on here but if you've never heard this I urge you to, for it's nothing short of fucking fantastic.

Not content with just that, the album rockets straight into the top 10 of all time with a live version of perhaps the two most famous Daft Punk songs to ever exist. Oddly enough it was also released as a single from the album, but the full fat one here beats the radio edit by a long way. If the last few tracks haven't convinced you yet, Alive 2007 is more than just a glorified Daft Punk DJ set with some extra stage design, It's just an absolute masterpiece, and a milestone for electronic live albums.

If I had it my way I'd do a full track-by-track breakdown but I don't fancy getting into yet another copyright headache, so skipping forward a little in the track-list to perhaps one of the more creative re-samples on the album, Face To Face here is backed with a cut & pitched up version of the vocals from Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, it even gets a little solo time to shine around 2 minutes in or so. It's not a floor shaker like the previous examples but it's still a damn fine listen. Oh, and the ending portion of Short Circuit is one of my favourite breaddowns/outros of all time, and it's put to masterful use here, I will never not love that slow decent into glitchy-ness.

I'm skipping a few more tunes to finish off (including the Aerodynamic/One More Time mash up, which is almost criminal). Instead I'm going to leave you with the Encore to the show,which does a fantastic job of summarising my initial point of it being one huge discography tour. The Encore starts off with a reprise of the Human After All motif from the very start of the album, incorporates some bits from Para One's remix of The Prime Time Of Your Life before adding the vocal hook from short lived Thomas Bangalter & DJ Falcon collab Together. It all goes off at 5:24 though in amazing fashion, if you're wondering why the crowd goes mental, here's a video of the light show at that time (this was before the Tron OST too!). AND THEN on top of that One More Time makes another appearance, and so does Stardust's Music Sounds Better With You to boot. Absolute perfection.

I'm in love with it still even after 10 years, the same can't be said of the girlfriend I had at the time though. I still can't really wrap my head around how long its been, safe to say a whole lot has changed but the album has always been a constant, and I'm showing no signs of getting tired of it anytime soon. Here's hoping I'll be back here in another 10 come 2027 to write about it's 20 year anniversary. Until then stay tuned, stay safe, and I'll see ya soon.